Bound By The Billionaire's Vows

The pain at the very idea was sharp.

‘Signor Vin Santo? We have spare clothes if you would like to get changed.’ A nurse was smiling at him kindly.

He didn’t return it. He couldn’t. ‘I’ll stay with my wife, thank you.’ The words rang with derision, yet the nurse didn’t seem to detect the undercurrent of Matteo’s tension.

Fury was at war with disbelief.

A machine was rolled through the door, its wheels making a soft squeaking noise as it was brought to rest beside Skye. The doctor he’d been speaking to earlier bustled in and sent him a look of reassurance.

‘Try not to be so worried,’ she said, pushing Skye’s dress up and arranging the blankets around her hips, exposing only her stomach. It was so flat. Was it possible that the doctor had got it wrong? How could a baby be developing inside her tiny frame?

His eyes devoured her body once more, purposefully looking for changes now. Her neat breasts were still small and round, just enough to fill his palms. But perhaps there was a new roundness to them he hadn’t appreciated before...

He swallowed past the bitterness. He would process her betrayal later. Once he knew his baby was okay.

The doctor lifted a part of the machine and pressed it to Skye’s belly, and Skye made a soft moaning noise.

‘Is it painful?’ Matteo asked instinctively.

‘No, not at all.’ The doctor spun the cart around so that Matteo could see the screen. He lifted his eyes to it and frowned.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘It’s too early to see anything clearly. I would say she is perhaps six weeks.’ The doctor smiled at him kindly. ‘Your baby is around the size of a lentil.’

‘A lentil?’

‘A legume,’ she clarified. ‘But I can see good blood-flow generally. There’s nothing here that worries me.’ She went to lift the wand but Matteo spoke, arresting her movement.

‘What is that?’ He pointed to a line at the bottom of the screen.

‘Ah. That is the heartbeat.’

‘The heartbeat?’ He closed his eyes as the reality began to thunder through him.

Emotions gripped him, so strong, so raw, and suddenly he wasn’t capable of speech. He stepped away from the bed, from his wife, from the doctor, and sucked in a deep breath of air.

‘Why don’t you get changed, Signor Vin Santo? You’ll be no help to her if you’ve come down with a flu.’

He didn’t answer. He was busy analysing the situation, trying to make sense of it.

Skye was pregnant with his child. With the Vin Santo heir. And she’d wanted to keep the information from him.

Unless... He turned slowly, his eyes locked to the doctor’s. Hope briefly flared in his chest. ‘You asked if she knew. Is there any way she wouldn’t have known?’

The doctor’s empathy was palpable. ‘Of course. It is still very early. If she hasn’t mentioned it to you, I think it is highly likely that she didn’t yet realise. It really depends on whether she had any other symptoms, and if she had a reason to do a pregnancy test. Were you trying to conceive?’

‘No.’ Their marriage was about one thing, and one thing only. The hotel. A child would just have complicated matters further.

How the hell had this even happened? She’d been on the pill, hadn’t she?

‘Your wife will be awake soon.’ The doctor leaned over and lifted one of Skye’s eyelids, then nodded confidently. ‘You will be able to ask her.’

It was suddenly imperative for Matteo to know the truth. No, it was imperative for him to know that she hadn’t known. He couldn’t believe that Skye would have planned to keep this information from him. Despite the evidence against her, he still had hope. A part of him believed she would never do something as calculated as taking a baby from its father.

No matter what he’d done, no matter what she believed, this was different. Their baby was not a pawn; it deserved better than to be used by either of them as a bargaining chip.

But worse was the belief she hadn’t intended to use it as a bargaining chip at all. Worse was the realisation that she had simply meant to disappear. To get on a plane and fly out of his life, taking his son or daughter with her.

He ground his teeth together and turned back to the bed.

His heart rolled.

It wasn’t possible.

‘Matteo? Where am I?’

Her thin, raspy voice drew his attention. He stared at her long and hard before speaking. ‘You’re in the hospital. In Venice.’ His expression was guarded, but he felt anger in his every expression, beneath the mask of civility he had donned with effort.

‘Hospital?’ Her eyes swept shut. ‘I fell. No, I fainted. That happens sometimes.’

‘Since when?’ he demanded icily, moving closer.

Her hands dropped to her stomach and he could see that she was in turmoil, that she was agonising over what to say. But apparently a need for reassurance eclipsed all other concerns. ‘Is he okay? Is my baby okay?’

CHAPTER THREE (#uba146e10-8157-59cf-87da-14d7fdc93c36)

EVERY SOUND IN the hospital was audible. The beeping of far-away machines monitoring the life signs of patients. The low-key chat of staff. The ringing of a phone. The whir of an overhead fan. Everything was audible in that way when things take on an almost supersonic quality in moments of shock and duress. The sounds had a brightness beyond their due.

Skye waited, her breath held, her worry lurching desperately.

‘Matteo?’ It was a whisper. A strangled, hoarse cry. ‘Please tell me...’

‘Our baby is fine,’ he said with a coldness that perforated her relief and doused it in ice.

Skye’s eyes fell closed. The whole point of coming to Italy and forcing his hand, of giving him the hotel, had been to ensure they were divorced before it was too late. Before her stomach became rounded, before she had given birth to their child, before he had any concept there even was a child. But she wasn’t sure she could summon the energy to care in that moment.

None of that mattered.

She felt only relief.

Tears stung her eyes. ‘Thank God. Oh, Matteo, I’m so relieved.’

‘They’re going to monitor you,’ he said, taking a step back from the bed and crossing his arms. ‘For a few more hours.’

‘I’m fine.’ Skye reached for the IV cable that was attached to her wrist and pulled it out. Matteo winced as the inch-long needle fell from her arm. ‘Fainting is one of the symptoms I’m learning to live with.’

She stood, but was so unsteady that Matteo couldn’t help but reach for her. His touch was clinical, but he didn’t want to see his wife—no, the mother of his child—splayed across the bed, unconscious again.